In this article the English historian Edward Lucie-Smith presents what he calls a “background to the work” of the Colombian artist Luis Caballero. This background includes a review of Caballero’s artistic influences (for example, the Dutch artist Willem de Kooning, France’s Jean Dubuffet, and especially, the Irish painter Francis Bacon), in addition to the cultural and political context of his early work (the questioning and criticism of the Mexican mural tradition by so many artists—among them Rufino Tamayo and José Luis Cuevas—and critics, such as the Argentines Jorge Romero Brest and Marta Traba, as well as the omnipresent scenes of violence in the Colombian environment.) Lucie-Smith also identifies the artists whose work could be linked to Caballero’s art in the 1960s (the Cuban Wifredo Lam, the Chilean Roberto Matta, the English artist Allen Jones, and the German Richard Lindner, among others), as well as those who influenced his later work (the classical Spanish artists Diego Velázquez, José de Ribera, and Francisco de Goya). Lucie-Smith notes that Caballero’s artistic training was also influenced by his travels to Europe (with residences in Madrid and Paris), and of course by his decision to settle in Paris in 1968, partly due to his homosexuality, which caused difficulties in Colombia. Against this background, Lucie-Smith analyzes the rupture involved in the work Políptico, the nature of Caballero’s earlier and later work, and the cultural significance (within a Colombian social and historical context) of his preference for a simplified form of figurative art, which began with a more naturalist approach than the later male nudes based on live models. The author considers Caballero’s work, especially what came after Políptico, to be unique in its postmodern, passionate style.  

This article was published in the catalogue of the exhibition Sin título: 1966–1968. Luis Caballero [Untitled 1966–1968. Luis Caballero], presented in 1997 at the Museo Nacional in Bogotá, Colombia. The exhibition was curated by the artist and art historian Beatriz González (b. 1938). The author of the article, the Jamaican-born English critic and historian Edward Lucie-Smith (b. 1933), presents a rich and complex perspective written after the death of Luis Caballero (1943–1995), in which he identifies the artist’s artistic and cultural influences, particularly during the 1960s. The critic also refers to aspects of the artist’s personal life that help to clarify his decision to reject the prevailing modern, abstract style of that decade, and instead opt for a more naturalist approach that was in tune with the postmodern author of later decades. This last description is quite significant and innovative since, according to Lucie-Smith, it contradicts and challenges the perceptions of those who saw Caballero’s “change of direction” and embrace of earlier classical artists and figurative-naturalist art as a retreat from what was considered “modern” art in the 1960s. There is more information relevant to this article in another written by the same author some years earlier: “Luis Caballero,” Luis Caballero, Paintings and Drawings (London: Editions Aubrey Walter, 1992) [see doc. no. 1087966].